Harvard Union
Harvard Union | ||
MPS Cambridge MRA | | |
NRHP reference No. | 87000500[1] | |
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Added to NRHP | January 26, 1987 |
Harvard Union, now known as the Barker Center and once known as the Freshman Union, is a historic building on Quincy and Harvard Streets in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
History
The union was designed McKim, Mead & White and built in 1900; it was their first commission on the Harvard University campus. It is a large 2-1/2 story brick building, with neo-Georgian styling that is more reminiscent of English Georgian architecture than that found in North America. The building was sensitively enlarged in 1911 (to design by Thomas Mott Shaw) to include the Varsity Club.[2]
The concept of the union was to provide a social space to students otherwise not members of the university's more exclusive
For some fifty years it was the freshman dining hall. Its interior was mostly demolished when it was converted into the Barker Center for Humanities in the 1990s. The Union was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1987.
See also
References
- ^ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. April 15, 2008.
- ^ "NRHP nomination for Harvard Union". Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Retrieved 2015-05-25.
- ^ A.S.Pier (1913). The Story of Harvard.